The first thing I noticed were his eyes, deep set and angular. They were far lighter than I’d originally thought, more hazel than brown. His skin was smooth, almost buttery, like he’d never had a blemish in his entire life. And his lips were positively pillowy. I bet they felt so soft.
“Bree, are you okay?” His brow furrowed with concern.
“I think so.”
“Oh, good.” He relaxed his features and breathed out. “You looked a little spacey for a second, I was worried you might be going into shock.”
No, just fantasizing about the texture of your lips.
“Stingray injuries can sometimes cause larger systemic issues, especially if you’re panicked.”
“I’m not panicked.”
“You were screaming pretty loudly. I heard you from clear across the beach.”
“I was in pain.” And also, a little panicked. “It feels a lot better now, though. What’s in this bucket besides boiling water?”
“Nothing. Hot water’s the usual treatment in this situation. The heat neutralizes the toxin in the venom. You’ll need to soak it for another half hour or so.”
He disappeared back into the lifeguard tower and returned a few seconds later with a bottle of water and two red pills. “Advil helps, too,” he said, and handed them over before plopping down in the chair beside me.
“Thanks.” I swallowed the pills and took a long swig of cold water. “I’ve heard of stingray attacks happening around here, but I didn’t realize how painful they were.”
“Yeah, they can be pretty rough, but the pain passes quickly once you start soaking it. You’ll be fine.” Trey smiled, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. “You need to learn the Stingray Shuffle.”
“What’s that?”
“When you’re walking in the shallows, never take big, heavy steps. Instead of lifting your feet up, just shuffle them along.” He demonstrated by sliding his feet back and forth along the ground. “The movement sends vibrations through the water that scare the stingrays away.”
“Good to know, but I won’t be going back in the ocean anytime soon.” Or ever.
“You’re just saying that because you’re in pain right now. You’ll be ready to dive back in tomorrow.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m afraid that’s not gonna happen.”
“Come on, don’t let one bad experience in the water scare you off.”
“This was actually my second bad experience, and I’m not interested in seeing what the Pacific has planned for my third.”
“What was the first one?”
I briefly considered concocting a dramatic lie, like a shark attack or an encounter with pirates. Something that made me sound like less of a wuss than “a scary surf lesson about a half-mile south of here.” As a pro surfer, Trey had undoubtedly experienced far more life-threatening situations in far more dangerous waters. Did I really want to embarrass myself by telling the truth?
Fortunately, I didn’t have to, because the lifeguard came back with a kettle full of hot water. She poured it in the bucket and a fresh wave of intense heat washed over my throbbing foot, dissolving the pain even further.
“Thanks,” I said, and when she left, I swiftly executed a change of subject. “So, this morning I went to The Bean House and saw the SurfRack poster.”
“What SurfRack poster?”
“The one advertising lessons with pro surfer Trey Cantu.”
He audibly gulped. “They made posters?”
“Apparently so.” Weird that he didn’t know about it. “Anyway, I didn’t realize my next-door neighbor was famous.”
“I’m not famous.”
“You’re telling me that if I googled your name right now, there wouldn’t be millions of search results?”
“Did you google me?” He looked horrified, as if I’d admitted to hacking his email or rifling through his underwear drawer.
“No.” Though his response made me think that I should. “Not yet, anyway.”
“But you would?”
“Of course I would.” As his eyes widened with disbelief, I said, “Don’t act like I’m some sort of stalker. Everyone googles people.”
“I don’t google people.”
“Well, you should. It’s a totally normal part of twenty-first century human interaction.” I pulled my phone out from the wrinkled dress and thrust it toward him. “Here, google me.”
He breathed out a nervous laugh. “Are you serious?”
“Dead serious.” I shook the phone. “We’ve all gotta start somewhere.”
One of his dark eyebrows shot skyward and the hint of a smile touched his lips. “Okay, fine.” As he took my phone, he said, “I don’t know your last name, though.”
“It’s Bozeman. B-o-z-e-m-a-n.” I looked over his shoulder as his thumbs tapped out the words. “My first name is e-e, not i-e.”
As suspected, there were only six pages of results, most of which confused me with the three other Bree Bozemans in the United States. I leaned back and let him scroll and tap, knowing he’d find nothing of any interest. That was one of the perks of living an acutely mediocre life: no internet scandals to worry about.
Then he asked, “Who’s Rob McCrory?”
My heart tumbled into my stomach. Hearing Rob’s name spoken out loud—by Trey Cantu, of all people—was jarring in itself. But that the internet had linked Rob and I together was perhaps more troublesome.
“What?” I snatched the phone from his hand. “Let me see.”
It was a photo of the two of us during last year’s neighborhood Halloween Pub Crawl, posted on an Instagram account for Bob’s Bar & Grill. Rob was wasted out of his mind, but you couldn’t tell because he was wearing a gorilla suit. I was stone-cold sober and staring daggers at the camera, my banana costume covered in freshly spilled beer. The caption read: PB locals Rob McCrory and Bree Bozeman having a little too much fun. #sloppybanana.
Lovely.
“He’s my horrible ex.” I dimmed the phone screen, disgusted. “He’s long gone, but I’ve still got that stupid gorilla suit in my closet.”
“I’ve got one of those.”
“A gorilla suit?”
“No, a horrible ex.”
“Did she work in a marijuana dispensary, too?”
He chuckled. “Nah. She’s an Instagram model.”
Of course.
Trey looked past me, his gaze stretching down the beach toward the water. Then his hand was on my forearm and the heat of his unexpected touch made me shiver.
“Check it out.” His voice was a throaty whisper as he nodded toward the ocean. I turned and took in the glorious view: the sun kissing the horizon, painting the cloudless blue sky with broad pink strokes.
No matter how many times you’ve seen it, a sunset over the Pacific Ocean would always blow you away. We sat in awestruck silence, watching the sun slip from view, inch by inch, until it was nothing but a single speck of bright yellow light, and then, nothing.
“Did you see the green flash?” Trey asked.
“I’m pretty sure that’s a myth.” Despite witnessing countless sunsets in my twenty-five years, I’d never once seen the green flash, the fleeting display of green light that supposedly shows up during the last moment of a sunset.
He laughed, his eyes crinkling again. “It’s a scientifically proven phenomenon.”
“In theory, sure. But conditions have to be just right for it to happen, so it’s rare. People probably think they see it a whole lot more than they actually see it.”
“So you think all those people are lying?”
“I think they’re fooling themselves because they want to say they’ve seen it.”
He leaned over the arm of his chair, a glint of mischief in his hazel eyes. “Do you think I’m fooling myself?”
My mouth hung open, una
ble to form a response. I’d been staring at that sunset, too, and I didn’t see anything but pink and yellow and blue. Not a single flash of green. But I wasn’t about to tell the man who’d carried me across the beach when I was blinded by pain that he was a fool.
Finally, I said, “I think you’re an optimist. And I think that’s refreshing.”
His lip quirked, like he was about to say something else, but the lifeguard returned with yet another kettle of hot water. “We’ll be closing down at dusk,” she said. “That’s in another twenty minutes or so. You should be good to go by then.”
“Great, thanks again.”
Trey nodded at the lifeguard, then stared out at the sand and the water, the waves as they rolled gently onto the shore. He looked bored.
“You don’t have to wait here with me,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
“I know.” He flicked his gaze toward me, then back again at the water. “You’re really never going back in the ocean, huh?”
“Afraid not.”
“But you live so close to it.”
“Well, I love going to the beach. I just prefer to stay on the sand.”
“Why?” His eyes were on me again. “What was the first bad experience you had in the water?”
There was no escaping him, and I wasn’t about to make up a lie. So I took a deep breath, and told him my truth.
“When I was ten, I went to a birthday party. At SurfRack, actually. They had some instructors show us the basics of paddling out, popping up, riding a wave. They kept us together in a small group and didn’t take us out very far, but I wasn’t very coordinated, so I had a hard time with the whole thing. At some point, I started drifting and couldn’t get back to the group. Then a big wave came, and I lost my footing and fell over. Before I could stand up, another one came, then another one. I was tumbling head over heels, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see. For a second, I thought I was going to die.
“Eventually, a lifeguard came and pulled me back to shore. Turns out, I hadn’t even been in deep water, I just panicked and couldn’t get my bearings.”
My cheeks started to burn, a reflexive response from all those times Rob had teased me about this. Admittedly, now that I said the whole story out loud again, it seemed completely ridiculous. I was a grown-ass woman, still holding on to a childhood fear. My life probably hadn’t even been in danger that day. I’d simply surrendered to anxiety, convincing myself the ocean was a perilous place.
I steeled myself for the mockery that would inevitably ensue. But Trey only looked at me, his eyes soft and kind. “That’s awful. Your surf instructor never should’ve let you out of their sight. I can see why you were traumatized.”
It felt as though I’d melted into the chair, my skin melding with the plastic beneath me. Here was a man who lived his life in the ocean yet understood my irrational fear. Unlike Rob, who rarely left the couch, and regularly used my weakness as an opportunity to ridicule me. The difference between them was staggering. Just the thought of it caused my stomach to lurch.
And rumble. Loudly.
On second thought, maybe that was hunger.
Trey bit back a smile. “Hungry, huh?”
Humiliating.
“I guess so,” I said, right as my stomach rumbled again.
He kneeled at my feet and slowly lifted my left foot out of the water. With a delicate grip, he turned it over in his hands, examining it from all angles. The pain had mostly subsided. It was hard to believe that mere minutes ago, I’d been totally anguished, shrieking like I’d lost my mind.
“How’s it feeling?” he asked.
“Better,” I said. “Still not a hundred percent, but compared to before, it’s nothing.”
“Great.” He set my foot back in the water, then went into the lifeguard tower and returned with a towel. As he tenderly dried my foot, I felt a pang of despair. Because this evening, though fraught with panic and pain, had also been magical, and I didn’t want it to end. Not yet, anyway.
So, I took a cue from Trey and faked a little optimism. “Wanna get something to eat?”
Oh, boy. That was a mistake. I could tell from the lines creasing his forehead. They spoke volumes, saying things like, Who does this girl think she is? I only date Instagram models.
I fumbled with my dress, pulling it over my head to cover my shame. No matter what positive energy I put out there, the universe wasn’t going to perform some miracle and convince Trey Cantu to sit down to dinner with an ex-GrubGetter who couldn’t stick a toe in the ocean without spiraling into uncontrolled hysteria.
But then, something kind of miraculous did happen. The lines in Trey’s forehead disappeared, and he smiled, and said, “Sure.”
Thanks, Universe.
Chapter 8
Trey slipped my flip-flop back on my foot, and when I went to stand, I stumbled. The pain was still there in hiding. Putting pressure on the wound brought it screaming back to the surface. With my hand on his shoulder for balance, I propped myself up on one foot and slapped a fake smile on my face. “Where to?”
“I’m not sure you can walk yet.”
“Pssh.” Eager to get on with our dinner date, I waved away his very valid concern. “I can hobble. Probably.”
Another laugh, another crinkle of his eyes. “Do you want me to carry you?”
“As grateful as I am for your beach rescue, I’m not sure I’d be comfortable parading down Mission Boulevard like a cavewoman thrown over your shoulder.”
“Then I can carry you piggyback.” At once, he crouched down in front of me, his bare back at my hips, his arms spread and ready to take hold. “Get on.”
This was too much. Wasn’t this too much?
“Are you sure?” I said. “Won’t I hurt your back?”
He side-eyed me over his shoulder. “Are you saying I’m not strong?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then get on.”
At this point, it would’ve been rude to turn him down, so I complied, hugging his shoulders close to my chest as he threaded his arms around my legs.
“You good?” he asked.
“I’m good.”
We took off, and I quickly realized how silly I was to think I’d hurt his back. He carried me the same way he carried his surfboard, like I weighed nothing. His arms were massive, and now that I got a closer look, they were much bigger than I’d originally thought. Firm and muscular, just like his hands, which grasped the backs of my knees with a touch that was strong yet soft. And his skin felt as buttery as it looked, smooth against mine as I squeezed my thighs tightly around his hips and—
“Bree?”
“Huh?”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” Just fantasizing about my thighs on your hips. “Why?”
“You didn’t answer me. I asked if you were down with Roberto’s.”
“Oh, yeah, definitely.”
Pacific Beach—and San Diego, in general—was blessed with a proliferation of casual taco shops, one more delicious than the next. Many of them were open 24/7, like Roberto’s, meaning you could get your Mexican food fix whenever you needed it. The way my stomach was still growling, I could have easily housed an entire tray of taquitos, but when Trey set me down on a bench outside the restaurant, I kept my gluttony in check and told him I’d have “one California burrito, please, and a horchata.”
As I sat alone waiting for him to bring back our dinner, I scrolled through my Instagram notifications, of which there were a surprising number. Considering I’d posted next to no original content, I had an awful lot of engagement. Over one hundred likes and a few dozen followers—my very first followers!—in only a matter of hours. Must have been the #choosehappy and #noexcuses hashtags. Demi DiPalma clearly had a significant presence on this platform.
When Trey returned, we unwrapped our respective burrito
s and dove in. The first bite was sheer heaven. Whoever had the bright idea to stuff meat, cheese, and French fries into an oversize flour tortilla was a culinary genius.
Wiping a glob of guacamole from my chin, I smiled at Trey. “Thanks for this.”
“The pleasure’s all mine. I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
“I never should’ve gone in the water.”
“That’s the trauma speaking.”
“Right.” I took a long creamy sip of horchata and watched Trey bite into his burrito. This guy could be anywhere he wanted right now: surfing waves in Indonesia or partying in Hollywood or making out with an Instagram model. Yet he appeared totally content to be here, outside an ordinary taco shop, eating an ordinary burrito, with me, an ordinary girl.
What was his deal?
“I feel like there’s an imbalance of power between us,” I said.
Trey stopped chewing and shot me a hesitant look. His mouth full, he mumbled, “What does that mean?”
“It means I’ve told you about one of my most formative traumatic experiences, yet I feel like I know nothing about you. Tell me something.”
He swallowed. “What do you wanna know?”
“Anything. Let’s start with the basics. How did you get into surfing?”
“I was raised in Hawaii and grew up on the beach.”
Rather than elaborate, he polished off his burrito and crumpled the wrapper in one hand. Clearly, he was uninterested in sharing his origin story.
I tried a different tack. “Where are you off to next?”
“What makes you think I’m going somewhere?”
“According to that poster, you just came off a championship tour. And since I’ve never seen you around in the four years I’ve lived next door to your house, I kind of assumed you’d be taking off again at some point. Aren’t you?”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure.” Then he clammed up again.
“You’re not giving me much to go on here.” Holding up my phone, I said, “If you prefer, I could just google you.”
That got a laugh, albeit a weak one. “Okay. I’m not sure where I’m going next, or if I’m going anywhere at all.” He paused, weighing his next words carefully, almost as if he was afraid to speak them. “I’m thinking I might be done with the whole pro thing.”
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